48 pages • 1 hour read
Marie BenedictCarnegie's Maid
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 10-12 Summary
By February 1864, Clara has succeeded in learning the intricate routine of managing all aspects of Mrs. Carnegie’s appearance and maintaining her bedchamber and wardrobe. She has succeeded in pleasing her exacting mistress and has finally earned her first day off after 150 days of uninterrupted service. Clara will use her spare hours to visit distant family relatives who live in a deprived area near Allegheny City. Their shack is little more than a sooty lean-to in a neighborhood known as Slab Town. Cousin Patrick Lamb works in an iron foundry while his wife Maeve cares for their five small children. Clara is evasive when her cousins question her about the Carnegies. No one knows that she received the job of lady’s maid through subterfuge. They think she is a lowly scullery maid. Seeing her poverty-stricken relatives, Clara thinks, “No matter the precariousness of Patrick’s work, their life was inestimably better than what they would have faced in Galway, where the famine ravaged entire families” (77).
As she travels home later on a streetcar, Clara begins to weep at the thought of her family’s plight and her limited options. A man seated next to her starts a conversation. Clara is startled to realize that it is Andrew. He says that he often uses public transportation and freely admits his own working-class origins, which his mother does her best to hide.
Clara and Andrew begin discussing literature, and Clara confesses a fondness for Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh. Browning is an abolitionist, and Andrew professes similar sentiments. He says that he met Abraham Lincoln while working on government railroad projects. After exiting the streetcar, the couple walks down a residential street where they are seen by Miss Atkinson, a Carnegie neighbor. She is shocked when Andrew introduces Clara because Miss Atkinson regards Clara as a mere servant and beneath her notice.
In March, Mrs. Carnegie hosts a tea party for the ladies in her social set. As they discuss the progress of the Civil War, Mrs. Carnegie is quick to point out that Andrew knows the newly appointed general, Ulysses Grant, thereby signaling her son’s importance to the war effort.
When Clara goes to the kitchen to check on the tea service, she has a brief conversation with Mr. Ford, the cook. He says that both the Carnegie sons were drafted, but they sent substitutes to fight for them, a legal maneuver that rich families use to avoid sending their offspring to die on the battlefield. Clara thinks of the ethics of the situation, considering Andrew’s purportedly egalitarian views. She also thinks of the poor young Irish immigrant, desperate for the offer of $850, who took Andrew’s place. In the hallway, Clara runs into Andrew, who presents her with a first-edition copy of Aurora Leigh.
Chapters 13-15 Summary
By April, Clara receives a letter from Eliza, but she fears that something is wrong at home. Eliza isn’t forthcoming with details, and Clara writes back, asking for information. In the same letter, she gives an apt description of her new employer: “Mrs. Carnegie is fierce and intelligent, nearly her son’s business partner in truth, but stingy with her affection. Only the elder Mr. Carnegie receives her unstinting love. I find her confusing, but I respect her” (96).
In May, Mrs. Carnegie proposes to hold an outdoor picnic for her neighbors. She relies heavily on Clara’s advice in planning the affair, and Clara is gratified to have become indispensable to her mistress. In part, the celebration will commemorate the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution outlawing slavery. Clara learns that Mr. Ford is a runaway slave who lost track of his wife and daughter as they were fleeing the South. He hopes one day to be reunited with them.
On the day of the picnic, the preparations are elaborate, and the food is abundant. Clara thinks ruefully of the extravagance she sees every day in the Carnegie household. Once the party gets underway, thunder erupts in the distance. An unexpected cloudburst sends everyone scurrying for cover. With no room left in the carriages, Clara and Andrew wait out the storm in a grove of trees. Andrew takes the opportunity to confess his feelings for Clara. He confides, “You are a lady, Miss Kelley. No other woman of my acquaintance is as graceful in her demeanor or as elegant in her thinking” (110). While Clara reminds him that his comments are inappropriate given the difference in their stations, she secretly feels that the two are kindred spirits.
Chapters 16-17 Summary
One day in August, Clara is holding a skein of yarn while Mrs. Carnegie knits. At the same time, the older woman is carrying on a business conversation with Andrew. They are discussing the merger of Iron City Forge and Cyclops Iron Company. As the conversation proceeds, Clara realizes that Andrew has withheld some details of the transaction from both his mother and his brother Tom, who was installed as the head of Iron City Forge. Tom enters the room and demands an explanation. Andrew smooths over the situation by saying he didn’t want to put his brother in an awkward position or force him to lie about what he knew of the merger. In this plausible manipulation of his own family, Clara sees Andrew’s ruthless side.
After the heated family discussion indoors, Clara flees to a nearby park to regain her composure. Andrew crosses her path and says that he also likes to seek refuge in the park. He tries to explain his behavior by talking about the hardships his family experienced in Scotland during his early years. He rationalizes, “Mother is determined that we will never experience poverty again. And so am I. I am ever mindful of my duty to them” (126). In this statement, Clara recognizes her own commitment to her family’s financial welfare. Andrew then talks about his early years of toil in America and says that he made himself indispensable to his employers. This is the same tactic that Clara uses, and she once again sees the similarity between herself and Andrew. She also sees the duplicity that both have practiced to achieve their goals.
Chapters 10-17 Analysis
The book’s second segment continues its examination of The Class System when Clara goes to visit her cousins in Slab Town. Even though her quarters in the Carnegie mansion are spartan, she lives in the lap of luxury compared to her cousin, his wife, and their five children, who are crammed into a squalid lean-to. Ironically, Cousin Patrick brags about his good fortune in that his family doesn’t have to share quarters with anybody else. Clara recognizes that as wretched as their situation is in America, they would likely have starved to death if they remained in Ireland. The life of the lower classes is quickly contrasted with Mrs. Carnegie’s extravagant entertainments for her social circle. The food prepared for their picnic might have fed Clara’s needy relatives for weeks. Similarly, the luxury of the Carnegie home seems a world away from Slab Town despite its geographic proximity.
Aside from an examination of the class system, these chapters introduce the theme of Roles and Identities and specifically how one’s identity is distinct from the role that they play. Clara frets over the duplicity that she must practice every day to keep her position in the household. Her family desperately needs the money, and she must maintain the pretense of an experienced lady’s maid to obtain it for them. However, Clara isn’t the only person playing a role. Her sister Eliza has been reticent about news from home and is withholding information to keep up appearances as the stable older sister. Even as Clara demands the truth from her sister, she withholds information from Eliza about her actual role in the Carnegie household. Neither sister is quite comfortable with sharing how their identities differ from their roles.
Other characters beyond the Kelley family are equally adept at pretending to be something they aren’t. On multiple occasions, Mrs. Carnegie appeals to Clara’s expertise to advise her regarding a lady’s appropriate behavior and appearance, as she wants to play the role of high-class lady so well that it becomes her identity. While in company with her social set, Mrs. Carnegie broadcasts the news that Andrew is closely connected with important government officials, including the new general, Ulysses S. Grant. She throws a lavish picnic to celebrate the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution but also to telegraph her wealth to all her acquaintances. In this way, Mrs. Carnegie’s behavior illustrates how external appearances and behavior only point to someone’s chosen role, rather than an authentic identity.
Mr. Ford also plays a role as the affable household cook, but Clara learns that his identity is complex and tragic as runaway from a plantation in the South. The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution makes him a free man, but such “freedom” is tempered by the long-term consequences of a system that resulted in the loss of his family as they tried to escape. The ordinarily genial cook harbors a deep melancholy at the thought that his wife and daughter might be lost to him forever. However, only Clara is privy to his secret misery.
The greatest actor in the household may be Andrew because he shows multiple faces to the world depending on his audience. To his dinner guests, he is affable and charming. To Clara, he is a kind benefactor and romantic admirer. However, he is also capable of scheming and manipulation. He withholds information about a merger from both his mother and brother until after the deal is struck. The other Carnegies feel betrayed, but Andrew smooths the situation over tactfully and doesn’t recognize his own duplicity. This brief exposure to the other side of Andrew’s personality leaves Clara shaken. She is equally disturbed by the knowledge that he paid a poor Irish immigrant to take his place as a soldier in the Union Army. Andrew preaches a fine sermon about democracy and equality, but he seems fully capable of taking advantage of those less fortunate. Unlike Clara, he remains blind to the distinction between a role and an identity.
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By Marie Benedict
